Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye is a story about a young black girl in 1960s America who is sexually abused by her father. It’s beautifully written and painful to read – speaking fearlessly about the realities of poverty, race and gender. It unearths the causes of victimhood and the silence which surrounds and supports the on-going occurrence of sexual violence. How to word something that is kept silent? How to show something that is kept hidden? Morrison writes:

“The novelty, I thought, would be in having this story of female violation revealed from the vantage point of the victims or could-be-victims of rape – the persons no one inquired of (certainly not in 1965); the girls themselves. And since the victim does not have the vocabulary to understand the violence or its context, gullible, vulnerable girlfriends, looking back as the knowing adults they pretended to be in the beginning, would have to do that for her, and would have to fill those silences with their own reflective lives. Thus, the opening provides the stroke that announces something more than a secret shared, but a silence broken, a void filled, an unspeakable thing spoken at last.”

Two things strike me as important here and may prove important in regards to other stories of sexual violence in other mediums:

That bringing words and images to the unspoken and unseen event is a kind of healing and overcoming. Morrison says that with the realising of the story of sexual abuse ‘a void is filled’, a need is met. Similarly, the silence appears as a kind of menacing spell, a thing to be ‘broken’. The relief provided by this break is clear in ‘spoken at last’ – this has been something needed and anticipated for a long time.

That the victim herself does not necessarily have the words: ‘the victim does not have the vocabulary to understand the violence or its context’. This is not to say, the victim is incapable of ever having the vocabulary, but rather her position as victim is defined by not having the words or a voice to speak against what is happening to her.

This makes it clear that to fight against the creation of victims of sexual violence, words and images must be given to those victims with which they can begin to address and describe their suffering and those who cause it. As it will become clear, these words and images are hard to provide or develop in a culture which still struggles to see the complex, various and ubiquitous nature of sexual violence.

In light of this, and to draw our attention to photojournalism, Ariella Azoulay’s essay, “Has Anyone Ever Seen a Photograph of Rape?” sets out an argument for the sheer lack of imagery of sexual violence in the canon of iconic photojournalism (1). Azoulay argues, whilst photographers have brought into the public arena images of many kinds of suffering – genocide, mutilation, violent warfare etc. – images of rape, an act which occurs in much the same context as the other atrocities, are largely absent. This labelling of the blind-spot proves to reveal not only that photographers have mostly failed at documenting rape when it occurs amongst other atrocities (typically during wartime), but their techniques of documenting rape during peacetime are also highly restricted and restricting. This blind-spot, in Azoulay’s analysis, goes on to be seen not just as an historical failure to vision, but also an ongoing inability to envision, born of the inadequacy of social discourses which still cannot recognise the reality of rape.

Azoulay’s questions are then, Why is it we cannot ‘show’ rape in the way that we can show other kinds of torture and bodily suffering? Hint: this might say more about the viewer than the actual event itself. And also – In what ways do these lack of images damage those who might need them – i.e. victims, potential victims and the wider society?

These questions will be explored later. As a first example, ‘Project Unbreakable‘ by Grace Brown is an interesting place to start:

It attempts to do the same thing that Morrison does with her novel, to fill ‘the void’ of silence and bring words and imagery to that which has been kept un-worded and hidden. People who have suffered abuse hold up the words of their abusers, words that were used to silence them. It is one simple gesture of resistance, of refuting the silence that has been put upon them. The phrases are short but they provide a small window into the complex world of abuse and sexual violence. That opening image, ‘I love you’, is especially powerful because it marks the importance of context and the complicated nature of abuse. They signal the way in which abuse can be non-violent – something that must be recognised if these cases are going to reach justice. They also indicate what the victim must struggle with: What if abuse is presented as love? What if you don’t know enough about love to be able to say this abuse is not love? That is certainly the case for Pecola, the abused girl in Morrison’s novel.

Perhaps the technique is a familiar one – photographs of people holding up signs with their personal stories or position on has been used in many other contexts and protests – but here is takes on a special resonance because these are words that have been characterised by the fact that they occur in private. Their power has been because of secrecy, because the abuser persuaded the abusee to never tell, because the abuser invoked shame and fear in the abusee. These signs are an act of placing the shame back on the abuser, of making the public witness what goes on in private. It is one simple way to take the words and turn them around.

The images also make clear, in case there could ever be any doubt, that choosing what to show – the very act of representation – is a fiercely political act. The format and style of that act of showing can make or break the message. These truths are especially raw in the context of a little seen and little understood phenomena which needs vision and recognition in order to overcome its occurrence.

This article is the first in a series about images of Sexual Violence in photography, photojournalism, documentary and visual art. My own piece, ‘You Did This To Yourself‘ figures a response to the issues and examples I raise here.

http://www.john.macpherson.btinternet.co.uk/about.html John Macpherson

Madeleine thank you for highlighting this enlightened response to an important issue.

I’ve (fairly distressing) personal experience of a (male) child rape that went unspoken about for several decades, virtually a whole lifetime for the individual concerned, and which only came to light in a very coincidental way near the end of the individual’s life. For me personally it threw into sharp focus some hazy incidents from my youth growing up with this person which at the time I did not fully comprehend: over-reactions to specific events, strange responses to certain things, but which now, with the clarity of (informed) hindsight, I can better understand. That this person felt compelled to remain silent for so long, confiding in no-one, particularly me given how very very close we were, is something that has elicited a mix of strong emotions in me. I’m deliberately vague about this for obvious reasons, and have to confess to some unease at being so.

The use of words on signs is as you note a familiar, one, but I don’t consider it any less powerful because of that. The strength for me comes from the familiarity of the words, and the impact that they carry when used in this way.

This may sound trite, but its not meant to trivialise the subject matter presented here, but ‘The Law’ for me is a thing I often marvel at. It’s ‘only’ words but vested in them is huge power, and I’ve been involved in several serious legal issues over the last few decades where my focus on the detail of the language being used against me (carelessly by people who should have known better) and designed to intimidate me, has allowed me to prevail, forcing significant, professional, corporate bodies to back down. Simply by reflecting their carelessness back at them in the form of the very words they used to try to subjugate me. I needed no other words to overcome them than the words they (ill) used themselves.

So, words have power. And words on signs – words used to subjugate and written by the survivor’s hands, and reflected back at the perpetrator – powerful.

About

duckrabbit is a digital production and training company. We make compelling films and digital media for a range of commercial, charity and broadcast clients.

We also train photographers, videographers, journalists, researchers and communications professionals in audio-visual storytelling, production skills and online strategic communications.

Contact

duckrabbit is always happy to hear from people interested in our work.